Luisa Spagnoli - businesswoman

Inventor of Baci chocolates who diversified into fashion

Luisa Spagnoli became the driving force of Perugina
chocolates after Italy entered the First World War

The businesswoman Luisa Spagnoli, who is credited with creating the Perugina company’s famous Baci chocolates and later developed clothing lines using wool from angora rabbits, was born on this day in 1877 in Perugia.

Spagnoli was one of the four partners who launched the Perugina brand in 1907. She is said to have invented the confection that came to be known as Baci as a way to avoid wasting surplus chocolate and hazelnuts left over from the company’s other lines.

Perugina, now owned by Nestlé, grew to be Italy’s biggest chocolate manufacturer and Baci its best-selling product. The romantic messages inside the wrappers that remain a popular feature of the chocolates to this day are said to have been inspired by the clandestine romance between Spagnoli and the son of one of the other partners.

Her Angora Spagnoli business evolved into the Luisa Spagnoli fashion line that was developed by her son, Mario, and grandson, Lino, who took the business forward after Luisa had died in 1935, at the age of just 57.

Spagnoli was born Luisa Sargentini, the daughter of a fishmonger, Pasquale. After leaving school at 13 to work on the accountancy and commercial side of her father’s business, she was married at the age of 21 to Annibale Spagnoli.

She went into business with her husband when they took over the running of a grocery store in Perugia.  They produced their own sugared almonds to sell in the store, expanding into jams, confectionery and chocolate.

Today's Baci chocolates are still produced
according to Luisa's 1922 recipe

In 1907, Annibale and Luisa joined up with pasta manufacturer Francesco Buitoni and another businessman, Leone Ascoli, in launching La Società Perugina.

The first product line was sugared almonds, but recognising the potential of chocolate they opened a factory at Fontivegge, near the city’s railway station, which produced cocoa powder and cocoa butter. 

Italy’s entry into World War One in 1915 brought profound changes. After the men were enlisted to do military service, Luisa found herself in charge of the business. As resources became limited, Luisa turned her focus to chocolate, blending caramelised sugar with cocoa to produce a 51% dark chocolate.  

Sugary sweets were defined by the Italian government as superfluous, luxury goods as they tried to avoid shortages and their production was prohibited, but Luisa priced her chocolate bars at a level that meant they were available to all and could not be classed as luxuries. For good measure, boxes of bars were sent to fortify Italian soldiers on the frontline.

In 1922, Annibale Spagnoli left the business, apparently because of internal friction within the company. Luisa remained, running the business jointly with Francesco Buitoni’s son, Giovanni.

Giovanni Buitoni, with whom Luisa
had a clandestine romance

It was in the same year that Baci chocolates was born. Ever resourceful, Luisa was determined that the surplus chocolate and hazelnuts left at the end of each batch of bars produced would not be thrown away. She had the idea to use the excess to make small, individual chocolates, wrapping chocolate round a blob of chopped hazelnuts and gianduja - a concoction of chocolate and hazelnut paste - topped with a whole hazelnut.

She thought the sweet resembled a clenched fist and decided to call it a cazzotto - the Italian word for punch. Giovanni, however, thought it was an inappropriate name for something meant to give pleasure and suggested bacio, which is Italian for kiss.

Buitoni was 32 and Luisa 46 but despite the age gap - and the fact that Luisa was already married - a romance developed between the two, which was to continue clandestinely for the rest of her life. While they were working together in the factory, she would secretly wrap love notes around chocolates as she sent them to Giovanni to taste.

These became the inspiration for the way Baci were marketed - chocolate kisses with a romantic note attached as the perfect present for young lovers.

At a time when women in business were a rarity, Spagnoli proved herself not only to have a shrewd commercial brain but also to be one of the most forward-thinking bosses of her age. 

She had houses and a swimming pool built for Perugina’s workforce and organised leisure activities to aid their wellbeing. During the war, she provided a nursery so that female employees with young children could continue to work even when their husbands were away at the front.

The fashion stores opened by her son,
Mario, carry his mother;s name

Her first moves into the fashion business came at around the same time as Baci were born as she began breeding long-haired angora rabbits, from which wool could be produced not by shearing their coats but simply by combing. She set up a production plant in the Perugia suburb of Santa Lucia, where the wool was used to make shawls, boleros and other fashionable garments. 

After a favourable reception when she showed off her products at the Milan Fair, she recruited a network of 8,000 breeders to supply the business. 

Sadly, Spagnoli did not live long enough to see her fashion enterprise reach its potential. Diagnosed with throat cancer, she moved at Giovanni’s insistence to Paris in order to receive the best care available but died there in 1935.

Two years after her death, Mario Spagnoli - one of three sons she had with Annibale - turned Angora Spagnoli from a small, artisan concern to industrial scale production, opening a new factory in Santa Lucia. Later, together with his son, Annibale - known as Lino - they opened a network of Luisa Spagnoli fashion stores, which still exist today.

In the 1940s, at a time when many Italians suffered from hunger and cold thanks to the deprivations of war, Mario maintained his mother’s spirit of generosity towards the workers who helped generate the company’s profits, making sure their efforts were rewarded with a Christmas gift of shirts, socks and wool to a value of 4,000 lire, a considerable sum at the time.

His mother is buried in the crypt adjacent to the Santa Lucia factory.  Her name lives on, though, in the packaging on Baci chocolates - still in the blue of the originals - with the subtitle 'Fondente Luisa', while the Perugina 51% dark chocolate bar is still marketed as the Perugina Luisa bar.

Piazza IV Novembre is the main square of the
Umbrian capital, Perugia, where Spagnoli was born

Travel tip:

Perugia, the capital of the Umbria region, is an ancient city that sits on a high hilltop midway between Rome and Florence. In Etruscan times it was one of the most powerful cities of the period.  It is also a university town with a long history, the University of Perugia having been founded in 1308.  The presence of the University for Foreigners and a number of smaller colleges gives Perugia a student population of more than 40,000.  The centre of the city, Piazza IV Novembre, has a mediaeval fountain, the Fontana Maggiore, which was sculpted by Nicolo and Giovanni Pisano. The city’s imposing Basilica di San Domenico, built in the early 14th century also to designs by Giovanni Pisano, is the largest church in Umbria, with a distinctive 60m (197ft) bell tower and a 17th-century interior, designed by Carlo Maderno, lit by enormous stained-glass windows. The basilica contains the tomb of Pope Benedict XI, who died from poisoning in 1304.

Perugia's historic
Pasticceria Sandri

Travel tip:

Luisa Spagnoli’s main store in Perugia is in Corso Vannucci, right in the heart of the city, which connects Piazza IV Novembre with Piazza Italia. The street takes its name from Pietro Vannucci , a painter born in Città della Pieve and best known by his nickname Il Perugino. His frescoes decorate the Palazzo dei Priori, one of the most important buildings on Corso Vannucci along with the 15th century Palazzo dei Notari and the House of Baldo degli Ubaldi, the deconsecrated church of Sant'Isidoro and the Palazzo Donini.  The street is also home to the historic Pasticceria Sandri, which has been trading there since 1860.

Also on this day:

1459: The death of humanist scholar Poggio Bracciolini

1893: The birth of bodybuilder Charles Atlas

1896: The birth of conductor Antonino Votto

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Zàini - chocolate manufacturer

First factory opened in Via Carlo de Cristoforis in Milan

The distinctive Zàini logo has become known
in 80 countries around the world

The Milan chocolate producer Zàini was founded on this day in 1913 when the company’s first factory opened in the Porta Garibaldi district of the city.

The plant, opened by Luigi Zàini, a young entrepreneur, in Via Carlo de Cristoforis, was advertised as a ‘Factory of Chocolate, Cocoa, Candies, Jams and Similar’.

Zàini, who had experience in the confectionery business as an importer of biscuits, jams and other sweet products from northern Europe, had noted the rapidly growing popularity of chocolate and thought the time was right to move on from his role as middleman and become a producer in his own right.

In Milan at the time there were around 15 chocolate factories, so competition was keen, but Luigi had a unique selling point in mind. His dream was to be able to satisfy any wish for something sweet, reportedly saying: “Everyone is different, so why aren’t we creating lots of different chocolates and sweets for each different person?”.

Luigi Zàini, in the centre of the front row, pictured
with all the employees at his first factory

Luigi flavoured his bars with rum, mandarin, vanilla and aniseed among other things and made them stand out by wrapping them in coverings inspired by the fashion for Stile Liberty design in architecture, furniture and decorative art.

And he put his entrepreneurial instincts to good use to make sure the public knew about Zàini’s rich dark chocolate bars. Years ahead of the football sticker craze launched by Giuseppe Panini in the 1960s, Luigi hit upon the idea of selling chocolate bars with free collectors’ cards featuring celebrity figures from the worlds of sport and entertainment, in particular footballers and silent movie stars.

In 1924, Luigi Zàini married Olga Torri, whose father owned a large grocery store in Milan. It was a second marriage for both following the loss of their first partners. The couple brought six children to the marriage from their previous relationships, including Luigi’s son Piero and daughter Rosetta, and had two of their own, Vittorio and Luisa.

Business continued to thrive and, in 1926, the company moved to a new factory in Via Carlo Imbonati in the Dergano district, about 2.5km (1.5 miles) from Via de Cristoforis. It remains the company’s headquarters today.

Sadly, Luigi Zàini died in 1938, struck down prematurely by serious illness. Olga, with whom Luigi shared an elegant house built within the courtyard of the factory premises, knew Luigi wanted the business to remain in the family after his death, and took the reins herself.

Olga Zàini, later to take over the business,
pictured with son Vittorio in around 1930

A woman of similar entrepreneurial spirit, she committed herself fully to the role. Olga was a strong believer that women had the same right to work as men and, under her leadership, Zàini became known for its high number of female employees.

World War Two presented new challenges. In order to protect the children, Olga relocated the family to Varese, a city some 50km (31 miles) away from Milan, midway between the great lakes of Como and Maggiore. She returned to Milan regularly to supervise production.

Situated in an industrial area of Milan close to major rail arteries into the city, the Zàini plant had the misfortune to be next to an anti-aircraft battery positioned to defend the area. Inevitably, heavy bombardments followed as Allied planes attacked the city and the factory suffered such enormous damage during a series of raids in 1943 that was effectively destroyed.

Yet Olga set about rebuilding it as soon as it was safe to do so, winning praise for putting much of the physical reconstruction work in the hands of the factory’s own employees to ensure they could continue to support their families.

Olga remained in charge of the business until the 1950s, when she took the bold step to rebrand Zàini’s traditional dark chocolate bar ‘Emilia’, after the family nanny who looked after her children while away in Varese, before handing over control to Vittorio and Piero.

The Zàini Milano chocolate shop in Via Carlo de
Cristoforis, near the site of the original factory

Under their guidance, Zàini added a gift range that included chocolates in decorative tins and cardboard packaging that enjoyed much popularity, as well as jars of boeri - a confection of dark praline and liqueur-soaked morello cherries, instantly recognisable for their distinctive red and gold individual wrappers.

Since the 1990s, Luigi Zàini spa has been run by a third generation of the family - Vittorio’s son and daughter, Luigi and Antonella.

Among their initiatives, with a nod to their grandmother’s commitment to helping women, is Le Nuove Donne del Cacao, a new line of chocolate bars introduced to support a female entrepreneurship project aimed at achieving equal opportunities for women cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast.

In 2013, to mark the 100th anniversary of the business, Luigi and Antonella opened the Zàini Milano cafe and chocolate shop, in Via de Cristoforis, the same street where their grandfather had opened his first factory.

The company today, now the sole large-scale chocolate manufacturer in Milan, has 200 employees and three production plants, located in Milan and the nearby town of Senago, with Zàini products on sale in 80 countries around the world.

The striking, colourful design of the Centro
Maciachini in the Dergano district

Travel tip:

Dergano, where the Luigi Zàini brand is still based, is much changed from the industrial zone it was when the factory was bombed in World War Two. Where factories once stood, complexes such as the Centro Maciachini, built on the site formerly occupied by Carlo Erba pharmaceutical company, abandoned in the 1990s, which comprises among other things a commercial sector, a food park and the Teatro Bruno Munari.  Dergano was once home to Armenia Films, built in 1917 and once seen as a rival to Rome’s Cinecittà. The entrance to the studios, where the great director Luchino Visconti shot his first film, still stands in Via Baldinucci. Once a rural village, the area again has the feel of a small community with a number of cafes and restaurants and independent shops. 

The ultra-modern Piazza Gae Aulenti is a feature
of Milan's fashionable Porta Garibaldi district

Travel tip:

Just a 15-minute walk from the Milan city centre, Porta Garibaldi is popular amongst tourists and locals alike for its restaurants, bars and nightlife. Corso Como, a wide pedestrianised thoroughfare leading directly to the neoclassical Porta Garibaldi arch, a Doric-style gateway built in the 19th century, has pavement cafes and fashion boutiques. The area is also famous for its avant-garde architecture and the impressive Piazza Gae Aulenti, a futuristic square designed by the Argentinian architect César Pelli, who also designed the square’s 231-metre (758ft) Unicredit Tower, which is Italy’s tallest building in the country. 

Also on this day:

1866: The birth of composer Francesco Cilea

1909: The birth of soprano Licia Albanese

1941: The birth of Italian president Sergio Mattarella 

1922: The birth of screenwriter and director Damiano Damiani 

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Giovanni Buitoni - entrepreneur

Turned family business into multinational company

Giovanni Buitoni took over the running of
the family business when he was just 18 

Giovanni Buitoni, the entrepreneur who turned Buitoni pasta and Perugina chocolates into the international brands they are today, was born on this day in 1891 in Perugia.

The Buitoni family had been making pasta since 1827, when Giovanni’s great grandmother, Giulia, opened a small shop in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro, in order to support the family after her husband, Giovan Battista Buitoni, had become ill.  She had her own recipe for pasta that used only high quality durum wheat.

Giulia had pawned her wedding jewellery in order to set up the shop but the business did so well that in 1856 two of the couple’s nine children, Giuseppe and Giovanni, opened a factory in Città di Castello, just over the border in northern Umbria, to manufacture pasta using a hard durum wheat they sourced in Puglia.

Giovanni’s sons, Antonio and Francesco, continued the company’s expansion, founding manufacturing plants in other towns, including Perugia.

It was in Perugia in 1907 that Francesco, noting the increasing popularity of chocolate, joined with several partners in launching the Perugina confectionary company.

Baci chocolates have been one of the most famous
lines made by the Perugina chocolate company

Giovanni junior’s destiny was probably always to have a role in the family business, although it came rather sooner than he expected.  After studying law he had gone to Germany in 1909 to learn the language and to observe the way German industries operated, their practises being somewhat advanced compared with Italy’s.

He curtailed his trip on receiving news that his father’s Perugina chocolate company was on the brink of bankruptcy. Already bursting with ideas for improving business, he persuaded his father to let him take over general management of the company at just 18 years old and succeeded in turning it into a profit-making concern.

Within only a short time, Perugina had expanded from a small basement operation to large factory with hundreds of workers. He installed modern machinery in the plant and introducing new products, among them the famous Baci -‘kisses' - chocolates still produced today, each containing a love note, which were the idea of Luisa Spagnoli, one of his father’s partners - and Giovanni's clandestine lover at the time - who went on to become famous in the fashion industry.

The Buitoni name has been visible in Italian shops since
1827, when the first Buitoni store opened in Sansepolcro

Giovanni even managed to combine running the company with a brief stint in the Italian Army in the First World War and later completing his doctor of law degree at the University of Perugia.

Always an innovator, he increased sales of Buitoni pasta products even in the Great Depression of 1930s by putting picture cards inside each packet for customers to collect. Customers who collected complete sets of the cards were eligible to take part in a radio contest and win prizes, including a FIAT automobile.

Giovanni Buitoni was by now an individual of some stature in Perugia, whose citizens he served as Podesta - mayor - from 1930 to 1935. In 1936, he married the opera singer, Letizia Cairone.

Letizia Cairone married
Buitoni in 1936

Buitoni’s expansion into production outside Italy came almost through a twist of fate.

In 1939, Giovanni and his wife were invited by the Hershey Chocolate Company, who were holding a 30th anniversary celebration at their headquarters in Pennsylvania, to visit the United States.

They also attended the 1939 World’s Fair to New York City to promote their own products. With his typical entrepreneurial vision, having noted how much visitors were being asked to pay for food, Giovanni opened a pop-up spaghetti café on the site, selling plates of pasta dressed in simple sauces at 25 cents each.  He and Letizia cooked about 15,000 portions over the course of the event.

They found the American lifestyle to their liking and stayed on for a while afterwards. Unfortunately, before they could return to Italy the Second World War broke out, and once Italy had declared war on the side of the Germans, Giovanni and Letizia were unable to travel or access their money.

With no option but to stay and fend for themselves, Letizia followed the lead of Giovanni’s great grandmother and pawned her jewellery, enabling Giovanni to find a small premises in which to open a pasta factory in New Jersey.

Thanks in part to his vision in promoting the Buitoni name at the World’s Fair, the brand began to sell.  Within 15 years, the Buitoni Foods Corporation had a much bigger factory in South Hackensack, New Jersey and later another one in Brooklyn. A spaghetti restaurant in Times Square, New York City, followed, along with a Perugina shop on Fifth Avenue.

Carlo De Benedetti sold the Buitoni business to
Nestlé for $1.4 billion in 1987

Giovanni returned to Italy in 1953 to found the International Buitoni Organization to coordinate all the industrial activities of the family-controlled multinational, but he continued to spend long periods in the United States.

A gifted amateur basso profundo, he was able to realise one of his dreams during his stay in the United States, to sing opera at Carnegie Hall in New York. He invited family, friends and employees to make an audience and, with the help of professional singers Licia Albanese, a soprano, and the baritone Anselmo Colzani, sang arias from Don Giovanni, Rigoletto and Ernani.

Giovanni Buitoni retired from the operational management of the Buitoni group in 1966. He and Letizia had no children and his nephew, Marco Buitoni, succeeded him as president and chief operating officer. Giovanni died in Rome in January 1979.

The business was sold in 1985 to the industrialist Carlo De Benedetti, who owned Olivetti and the newspaper La Repubblica among other things. He in turn sold it for $1.4 billion to its current owner, Nestlé.

The Fontana Maggiore in Perugia's Piazza IV Novembre

Travel tip:

Perugia, the capital of the Umbria region, is an ancient city that sits on a high hilltop midway between Rome and Florence. In Etruscan times it was one of the most powerful cities of the period.  It is also a university town with a long history, the University of Perugia having been founded in 1308.  The presence of the University for Foreigners and a number of smaller colleges gives Perugia a student population of more than 40,000.  The centre of the city, Piazza IV Novembre, has a medieval fountain, the Fontana Maggiore, which was sculpted by Nicolo and Giovanni Pisano.

A view across the rooftops of Sansepolcro

Travel tip:

Sansepolcro is a town of 16,000 inhabitants situated about 38km (24 miles) northeast of Arezzo in the east of Tuscany, close to the borders with Umbria and Marche. The historic centre is entirely surrounded with fortified walls, built in the early part of the 16th century. The centre of the town is the Piazza Torre di Berta, named after the 13th-century tower of the same name, off which can be found the impressive Palazzi Pichi and Giovagnoli and the 14th-century cathedral, dedicated to St John the Evangelist.  The city is famous as the place in which the brilliant early Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca was born and died.

More reading:

Michele Ferrero, the man who invented Nutella

Mario Pavesi, the biscuit-maker who gave Italy the Autogrill

Anselmo Colzani and his 16 seasons at The Met

Also on this day:

1835: The birth of pioneer criminologist Cesare Lombroso

2007: The death of author and journalist Enzo Biagi

Vino Novello - Italy's 'nouveau' - goes on sale


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Domenico Ghirardelli – chocolatier

Built famous US business with skills learned in Genoa

The chocolatier Domenico Ghirardelli, founder of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company in San Francisco, was born on this day in 1817 in a village just outside Rapallo in Liguria.

The Ghirardelli Chocolate Shop in Ghirardelli Square
on San Francisco's northern waterfront

Also known as Domingo, Ghirardelli arrived in San Francisco in 1849 during the rapid expansion years of the Gold Rush, having spent the previous 10 years or so in Peru, where he had run a successful confectionery business.

After making money as a merchant, initially ferrying supplies to prospectors in the gold fields, he set up his first chocolate factory in 1852, drawing on the skills he acquired as an apprentice in Genoa.

By the end of the century, the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was one of the city’s most successful businesses, with a prestige headquarters on North Point Street, a short distance from Fisherman’s Wharf, in a group of buildings that became known as Ghirardelli Square.

The son of a spice importer, Ghirardelli was born in the village of Santa Anna, just outside Rapallo, about 25km (16 miles) along the Ligurian coast from Genoa, in the direction of La Spezia to the southeast.

His father wanted him to have a trade and once he had reached his teens sent him to be an apprentice at Romanengo’s, an important confectioner in Genoa, with a view to setting himself up in business.

Domenico Ghirardelli arrived in San
Francisco from Peru in 1849

However, having been forced to give up its status as an independent republic and become part of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia as part of the settlement following the Napoleonic Wars, Genoa was a volatile city prone to riots and to brutal repression by the military and in 1837 Ghirardelli decided, in common with many Italians, to leave in search of a better life in the New World.

At the age of only 20 and newly married, he arrived first in Montevideo in Uruguay, moving on a year later to Lima in Peru, a prosperous city where there was already an established Italian community.

He set up a confectionery shop on Calle de los Mercaderes, the city’s main shopping street, which he modelled on Romanengo’s store in Genoa.  After the death of his wife, he married for a second time, to a Peruvian widow, and would have stayed in Lima had his former neighbour, an American from Pennsylvania who had moved to San Francisco, not written to him urging him to follow.

The neighbour, James Lick, who would go on to become the richest man in California, had set himself up on the proceeds of 600lb (272kg) of chocolate Ghirardelli had given him to sell. With San Francisco on the brink of an economic boom after the discovery of gold in 1848, it was too good an opportunity to miss.

Trading first in general merchandise, Ghirardelli rapidly expanded from running a delivery service to owning grocery stores in San Francisco and Stockton, plus a soda fountain, a coffee house and a part-interest in a hotel.  Within two years, he had amassed wealth of $25,000, which then had the buying power of around $750,000 (€610,000) today.

The Ghirardelli factory was established just back from
the San Francisco waterfront

He opened his first chocolate factory in 1852 in the Verandah Building on Portsmouth Square, living above the premises, before moving to Jackson Street, building a separate family home in Oakland.  The business grew even more after the accidental discovery of cocoa powder, the result of some bags of chocolate paste being left unattended in a warm room.

The butterfat in the paste melted, dripping out on to the floor, leaving behind in the bags a greaseless residue that could be ground into a powder, which Ghirardelli patented and sold under the name of Broma, to be used as a cake ingredient or for making a hot cocoa drink.

The recession of the 1870s brought a massive scaling back, with many of the company’s assets, including the house in Oakland and several stores, being auctioned off to keep the factory going.

Yet, despite competition from others keen to exploit chocolate’s continuing popularity, the business recovered, with Ghirardelli’s sons increasingly involved.  Broma, rebranded as Ghirardelli’s Chocolate Powder, continued to be a big seller.  By the late 1880s, the company was producing and selling one million pounds (453,000kg) of the powder each year.

Ghirardelli retired in 1889, handing control to his sons.  In 1892, needing to expand, the company acquired a large woollen mill near the city’s northern waterfront at what his now Ghirardelli Square.

He died in 1894, contracting influenza during an extended visit to Rapallo, where he had gone in order to rediscover his roots. His body was returned to San Francisco, to be buried in the family mausoleum in Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery.

Production continued at Ghirardelli Square until the 1960s, when the business was sold and the manufacturing operation moved to San Leandro.  Today, while still trading under the family name as the third oldest chocolate manufacturer in the United States, the business is a subsidiary of the Swiss company, Lindt and Sprüngli. There is still a Ghirardelli shop in the Ghirardelli Square shopping and restaurant complex

A quaint 16th century castle guards Rapallo's harbour

Travel tip:

Rapallo, larger and a little cheaper than its exclusive neighbour Portofino, is an attractive seaside town of the eastern Italian Riviera, known as the Riviera di Levante. The town developed around a harbour guarded by a small castle – Il Castello sul Mare – built in 1551, which sits right on the water’s edge.  Behind the harbour is a network of narrow streets. There are boat service to Portofino, as well as Santa Margherita Ligure and Camogli, while the main Genoa to Pisa railway line passes through the town.

The ornate interior of the Romanengo store in Genoa

Travel tip:

Romanengo’s confectionery store in Via Soziglia in Genoa has become a tourist attraction in itself, a wonderfully ornate emporium barely changed since it was refurbished lavishly in the mid-19^th century, having opened for business for the first time in 1814.  Modelled on Parisian confectioners’ shops, it has a marble floor, a frescoed ceiling, elegant chandeliers and beautiful inlaid rosewood shelving and counters, with endless dishes of brightly coloured confectionery in glass cases. The company logo of a dove carrying an olive branch symbolised peace at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.


More reading:

Michele Ferrero - the man who invented Nutella

Humble beginnings of chocolate giant Ferrero

The entrepreneur behind Perugina chocolates

Also on this day:

1513: Death of Pope Julius II

1609: The birth of military leader Raimondo Montecuccoli

1868: Death of painter and revolutionary Giuseppe Abbati

(Picture credits: Ghirardelli store by PictorialEvidence; San Francisco waterfront by Saopaulo1; Rapallo Castle by RegentsPark; all via Wikimedia Commons; Romanengo store from www.romanengo.com) 

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Michele Ferrero - the man who invented Nutella

Hazelnut spread that became a worldwide favourite

Nutella served with crusty bread is a popular snack
in Italy and around the world

The man who invented the global commercial phenomenon that is Nutella spread was born on this day in 1925.

Michele Ferrero, who died in 2015 aged 89, owned the Italian chocolate manufacturer Ferrero SpA, the second largest confectionery producer in Europe after Nestlé.

He was the richest individual in Italy, listed by the Bloomberg Billionaires index in 2014 as the 20th richest person in the world.  The wealth of Michele and his family was put at $20.4 billion, around 14.9 billion euros.

Ferrero is famous for such brands as Ferrero Rocher, Mon Cheri, Kinder and Tic Tacs.  But, it could be argued, none of those names would probably exist had it not been for Nutella.

The chocolate and hazelnut spread came into being after Michele, who was born in the small town of Dogliani in Piedmont, inherited the Ferrero company from his father, Pietro, who died in 1949 only three years after setting up in business from his bakery in nearby Alba.

Michele Ferrero became the richest man in Italy

With high taxes on cocoa beans making conventional chocolate expensive to make, Pietro had managed to build the business by producing a solid confectionery bar that combined Gianduja, a traditional Piedmontese hazelnut paste, with about 20 per cent chocolate.

A creamy, spreadable version was produced in 1951 under the name 'Supercrema' but it was after Michele decided to add palm oil to the recipe that the product really took off.  Renamed Nutella, and sold in a jar, it rolled off the production line at the factory in Alba for the first time on 20 April 1964.

Nutella was instantly popular and remains so more than 50 years later. Ferrero now produces 365,000 tons of Nutella every year in 11 factories around the world, with its biggest markets in Germany, France and Italy.

The 50th anniversary of Nutella's invention was commemorated with a stamp issued by Poste Italiane in 2014.  One fan of the product instigated World Nutella Day, which is celebrated by devotees on 5 February each year.

Building on Nutella's success, Ferrero created the Ferrero Rocher pralines, Kinder bars and Kinder Eggs and a host of other brands. What had begun as a small provincial chocolate factory turned into Italy's most valuable privately-owned company with sales of around 8 billion euros ($9 billion), selling its products in 53 countries.

Michele had a reputation for maintaining good working conditions for Ferrero's 22,000 employees. A fervent Catholic, he had a Madonna placed in every factory and office belonging to the company.

He eventually made his home in Monte Carlo but commuted to Alba by helicopter every day, playing an active role in creating new products until only a few years before his death.

Giovanni Ferrero, the youngest of Michele's two sons, is now the company's Chief Executive.  His brother, Pietro, was unfortunately killed in a cycling accident in South Africa in 2011.

Alba's Romaneque Duomo

Travel tip:

Alba, situated about 65 kilometres south-east of Turin, is a beautiful town famed for the production of white truffle, peaches and elegant wines, including Barbera and Barolo.  The town dates back to Roman times and has been fought over through history by Hungary, France, Spain and Austria among others.  Its partisans won a Gold Medal for Military Valour during the Second World War after liberating the town from Mussolini's Fascists.  Notable buildings include the Romanesque Duomo, built in the 12th century, restructured in the 15th century and further restored in the 19th century.

Travel tip:

Michele Ferrero's home town, about a half-hour drive from Alba to the south-west, Dogliani nestles among vineyards and woods of hazel trees.  Wine production plays an important role in the town's economy, in particular the Dolcetto di Dogliani red, which is made only from Dolcetto grapes grown within a small, clearly defined area, of which the yield is strictly controlled to maintain the wine's high value.  The late 19th century church of San Quirico e Paolo is impressive.  Visitors to the area before Christmas can witness the town's Presepio Vivente, in which local people enact the nativity scene on the nights of 23 and 24 December.

(Photo of Nutella by A Kniesel CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Duomo in Alba by Pippo-B CC BY-SA 3.0)

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